Newcomers
Bob Underwood
Box 40, St. Peters MO 63376
THE FEBRUARY television "sweeps" have come and gone.
I was settled into rerun March when the catalog came in the mail. With the house quiet and a few minutes to spare, I dug into the catalog. I didn't have anything specific to buy; it was just some ho-hum time away from a hectic schedule.
A banner photo alongside a picture of a model leapt from an advertisement: "90% prebuilt — completely finished."
A chuckle escaped my old head. My wife glanced my way, attributed my utterance to senility, and went on reading her book.
The chuckle was forthcoming since a month or two earlier, I had read a delightful editorial by Jeff Troy, editor in chief of Hobby Merchandiser, an industry magazine. In a very humorous fashion, Jeff poked fun at some of the language usage of today.
His thrust: How can something be prebuilt—built before it's built? The concept that something is 90% prebuilt and is "completely finished" is even more interesting.
You know what is being implied: The construction of the model is completed (90%) and some assembly (10%) is necessary. Everything is "finished," meaning that the covering is applied.
The few moments of time required to ponder this interesting advertising approach spawned the thoughts for this column. This column isn't to take the advertisers to task for the wild-and-woolly ride they subject us to with copious adjectives and adverbs thrown about. Frankly, I rather enjoyed the exercise.
Years ago when I was teaching fifth graders, I had them bring in advertisements so they could dissect the sentences (or sometimes could not) — dissect sentences, that is by eliminating the adjectives and adverbs and getting down to bare-bones text.
Try it sometime. You'll find it humorous—especially with the automobile ads.
The discovery of the advertisement text nudged me into a deeper examination of the catalog.
"Newcomers" features a section called "Illumination." The purpose is to identify the terms or jargon used by the hobby. I also attempt to explain the use of various initials, acronyms, etc., as I've used them.
To the credit of the company whose catalog inspired this column, a number of the "brief spiel's" are identified in the text or in a separate listing.
The mail-order company is not the originator of many of these terms. The radio companies, the engine people, and the associations and SIGs (Special Interest Groups) in AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics) are responsible as well.
What's an ARF? It may or may not be an WARF, and it certainly isn't an RTF.
The Almost Ready to Fly (ARF) has been around for many years. However, the All Wood Almost Ready to Fly (AWARF) and the Ready to Fly (RTF) are much-more-recent additions to the vocabulary.
Now you have an idea where this is headed. On facing pages in the catalog are banners indicating that the models are "IMAA Legal."
If you think that building a model for your private Sunday pleasure is going to bring uniformed Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) teams to check out the model, rest assured — that won't happen.
However, if you wish to enter and fly in one of the many wonderful International Miniature Aircraft Association (IMAA) fly-ins held throughout the country, there are requirements for the model size.
The IMAA is a large model-oriented SIG. (This is a test—do you remember?)
The two models pictured in the catalog may cause a concern about how they can be "legal." One of the models sports an 81-inch wingspan, one inch longer than the minimum required. The other model has a 73-inch wingspan.
How is that legal? It is a 1/4-scale! That's another possible way to qualify.
There's a model in the catalog that you can build to enjoy IMAC and TOC-style 3-D (three-dimensional) aerobatics.
IMAC stands for International Miniature Aerobatic Club—another SIG. (You've got that one down, haven't you?) IMAC is the model equivalent of the full-scale Aerobatics group, IAC (International Aerobatic Club).
Page 86 of the AMA Competition Regulations provides the rules for IMAC events. IMAC flies the Aresti system of maneuvers, defined by lines, arrows, and other symbols to illustrate the rolls, loops, turns, etc.
TOC stands for Tournament of Champions. This is an invitational event held in Las Vegas, and it features big bucks to the participants who fly big modern—really big models!
Part of the TOC routine may include 3-D maneuvers that are impossible to describe, let alone to believe that an aircraft can perform them.
There's a model with "barn door ailerons" displayed in the advertisement.
You won't find a Mail Pouch™ Tobacco ad on the side. You will find wide, partial-span ailerons inset in the wing and running from mid-span to the tip, as opposed to "strip ailerons" that are like an add-on to the trailing edge—usually running the length of the full wingspan. The latter are much narrower.
"The ultimate in indestructible RC aircraft" was featured on one page of the catalog.
The term "indestructible" may be overkill. If you can't destroy the aircraft, I'll bet the average two-year-old could do it in a flash.
To the company's credit, however, it states that "if you crash or destroy" the model before you learn to fly it, it will "replace it free."
Engines and Acronyms
The section dealing with engines has acronyms galore!
There's LA and FP-RN, FSR-RN, BGX and RX, FS and RX, GPA and XL Series ABC, FT and FRS, AP, etc. Most of these are simply model designations, which run from the not-so-expensive to "gulp!"
In a few cases, the letters refer to engine construction and/or metallurgy. ABC stands for the metal combinations for the pistons and cylinder liners—Aluminum/Bronze/Chrome.
BB refers to ball-bearing-supported crankshafts. Inexpensive engines use bushings in place of the ball bearings.
Some engines feature CNC (Computer Numeric Control) production machinery for grinding the parts, as opposed to LAR (Looks About Right method—my term).
Actually, BB and CNC can and will produce excellent products. The difference may be in the unit cost to produce.
You'll also see acronyms to designate the family of adhesives referred to as "instants."
In the late 1970s, many persons referred to these as "Super Glues." More commonly used is CA—the technical term for cyanoacrylate adhesives.
Regardless of the term, if you drop the bottle on the floor and step on it, you're still going to stick your shoe to the floor, or stick your finger to your nose, ear, or model.
It's nice to have CG stands to measure the Center of Gravity. Devices to measure control surface "throw" are helpful, and an "incidence" meter is indispensable.
You know why the CG is important. A tail-heavy model flies once—almost!
Many modelers feel "if some is good, more is better" about control-surface throw.
Wrong! Too much, and you may achieve the same result as an incorrect CG.
The same is true for wing and horizontal tail incidences. If they are not properly set, you run the risk of having a model that is hard to handle at best, or a bag of pieces at worst.
Incidence refers to the angle at which the flying surfaces are set, relative to the thrustline of the engine and fuselage.
Radio and Electronics
Now to the electronic stuff.
The AA in our house inputs the radio system. (No, that's not what you think—AA stands for Administrative Assistant! The radio stuff is really another language.)
I threw Rx and Tx at you earlier. But let's take a few simple terms from one description and see how they fly.
Consider that you can buy radio systems with ATV, exponential, preprogrammed mixes, dual rates, all-channel EPA, SMT, higher 30IM, LED displays, sub trims, DSC, five-point revolution mixing, ATL and dual conversion, and you can get them in AM, FM, PPM, and PCM!
Huh?
I won't run through all of these, although isn't the "preprogrammed mixes" like the opening from Jeff Troy about models built before they're built?
- ATV is Adjustable Travel Volume, sometimes referred to as EPA—endpoint adjustment. It lets you set how far the servo will travel on either side of neutral. It's a big help!
- Dual rates allow you to set two (or more) amounts of surface travel, controlled by the flip of a switch.
- SMT: Surface Mount Technology—how the components are attached to the circuit board.
- 30IM: Third Order Intermodulation rejection. This determines the selectivity of the receiver in rejecting certain types of interference.
- LED displays: Light-Emitting Diode.
- DSC: Direct Servo Controller. This allows you to set trims, operate servos, etc. without turning on the portion of the Tx that transmits a signal. This is really helpful at crowded fields and contests.
- Dual Conversion: Utilized in receivers to filter the incoming signal, and to increase selectivity and sensitivity.
- AM, FM, PPM, and PCM represent the forms of modulation employed to transmit the signal. There's not much Amplitude Modulation (AM) around. Frequency Modulation (FM) is found in most units. Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) and Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) are generally found in the more-expensive units, and include the so-called "fail-safe" options.
Look at the "Electronics" column by Eloy Marez for more information on this subject.
To really get confused, purchase a computer radio and try to read the symbols used on the programming screen.
There's so much more on the subject—I haven't even touched on the myriad of terms and acronyms for the general association business.
Perhaps next month, if meetings with the AMA's EC (Executive Council) and the FAI CIAM (Federation Aeronautique Internationale's International Aeromodelling Committee) don't cut up too much of MAT (My Available Time), we can continue to delve into this LLICAP (Lesson In Confusing Labels and Phrases).
MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
